Many sporting events require that participants wear a mouth guard in order to protect their teeth from damage in case of an impact. There are a wide variety of mouth guard types that can be used. Inexpensive “stock” mouth guards come in pre-set sizes and shapes and may not fit to the particular shape of a user's mouth. They may also not fit snugly around the teeth, making it more likely that the mouthpiece will fall out.
More sophisticated mouth guards include plastics which soften when boiled. These mouth guards can be custom fitted by boiling them to soften the plastic, after which a user can place the mouth guard in their mouth and bite while the plastic is still soft to deform it and create a custom fit. Another further way to manufacture customized mouth guards is to custom manufacture the mouth guard from a separate impression of the wearer's teeth. This requires that an impression be taken and sent to a manufacturing facility. The mouth guard is then custom formed based on the impression and returned to the user.
One particular problem that occurs frequently at sporting events where mouth guards must be worn is that participants forget or lose their mouth guard. If they do not have a replacement mouth guard, they may be prevented from participating in the sport. To avoid this situation, coaches frequently have available a selection of stock mouth guards that can be used. However, these mouth guards cannot be custom fitted to the user at the venue. Even if the stock mouth guards can be customized after a boiling process, it is typically not feasible to boil a mouth guard at the sporting venue.
Accordingly, a need exists for a mouth guard which can be easily and quickly custom fitted to a user's teeth on demand at a sporting event without the need for boiling the mouth guard to soften its material.
It is known to provide a mouth guard tray blank along with a two-part putty that can be mixed by a user, applied to the tray of the mouth guard between its facial and lingual walls and then used to take an impression of the wearer's upper teeth.
A drawback to this design is that the user may bite hard enough on the tray during the impression process to displace enough of the impression material that little or no impression material remains between the upper and lower teeth. This compromises both the fit and the degree of protection of the completed mouth guard. A further drawback is that if the mouth guard is too small or positioned incorrectly when the impression is taken, the user's teeth may be so close to, or even touching the facial wall, that there no impression material will fill this area daring the fitting. As a result, the only side impact protection provided to teeth in such regions comes from the facial wall itself. While the facial wall could be made thicker, this also reduces the ability of the mouth guard to mold to the particular shape of a user's mouth during the fitting process. There exists a need to provide an improved mouth guard that addresses these issues as well.